Mission Blog of Chuck and Cheri Lambson

  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with the Sister missionaries in our area at a japanese noodle place. The noodles were meh but the company was outstanding. From left to right, Sister Susanto, Sister Halawa, Sister Nugraheni, Sister Abbott and us.  Sisters Susanto and Halawa taking a picture of dessert. It was really good dessert. Sister Lambson completed a major milestone while we were waiting for a flight to Bali this week for our Senior Missionary Zone Conference. She finished the beginner level of Duolingo Indonesian Language course. 669 consecutive days! She is amazing. (Duolingo is a language learning app) One of my simple pleasures while in Indonesia and Malaysia has been making popcorn the old fashioned way, by shaking it in a pan. This is my popcorn pan. Last week Sister Lamsbson tried making some popcorn but she had the heat too high and it melted the handle. Sadly my popcorn pan is being retired. We will fly home in two days so I will do one more post to close ...

  This week we were asked to attend a special meeting on behalf of The Church. This was the annual opening session of the Indonesian Association for Blind People which operates the Eye Bank. One of the areas of focus of this organization is register people to donate their eyes for cornea transplants after they are deceased. Members or the Church have helped to promote and register people as donors for several years so the organization invited us to attend this meeting. The humanitarian missionaries were all out of town so Cheri and I attended in their place. These are wonderful people, many of them are medical professionals in the field of opthamology. They have been operating for many years performing cornea transplants and gradually increasing donors. A group of blind dancers performed at the event. I admire the people who have turned their hearts to helping these blind people to have a way to develop and express their talents through performances like this.

  I'm sure all missions have traditions when a group of missionaries complete thier missions. In our mission we gather at the mission home for a devotional where we sing, hear testimonies of the departing missionaries and messages from our mission leaders and after the devotional is over the mission leaders cut off the ties and scarfs of the missionaries. This group is special to us because they have overlapped with us for almost our entire mission. The two sister pictured here, Sisters Cook and Pickett, arrived a week after we arrived so they have overlapped for the entire mission. Three of the Elders were in the group that we escorted to the Cebu temple. Hard to say goodbye. This is Sister Sri Anon. She is the Church Historian in Indonesia and she came to our office this week to interview us. She interviews all of the senior couples before they leave and submits transcripts with her Church History reports. Sister Sri is 80 years old and is a pioneer in the Church here. She joined...